Ripple, Visa Join Rivals in Asia’s Digital Money Push

The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced on Oct. 23 that nine new participants, including Ripple and Visa, joined BLOOM, adding to the 16 existing participants. The expansion also added Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as policymaker members. BLOOM is a public-private initiative intended to agree how tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins are accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions and borders, through work on acceptance and settlement, interoperability, and programmable controls. Existing participants include Coinbase, J.P. Morgan and DBS.